Joe struggled to his feet and lurched to the table. Tolliver wondered at the indecision in the other's eyes, which was more apparent. Joe fumbled aimlessly with the yellow slips. Tolliver's fingers, outstretched toward his coat, hesitated, as if groping for an object that must necessarily elude them. "Special!" Joe mumbled. "And--Hell! Ain't thirty-three through yet?" He swayed, snatching at the edge of the table. Tolliver lowered his hands. The division superintendent had pounded out something about fuses. What had it been exactly? "Keep fuses burning." With angry gestures he took his coat and cap down, and put them on while he repeated all the instructions that had been forced into his brain with the effect of a physical violence. At the table Joe continued to fumble aimlessly. "Ain't you listening?" Tolliver blurted out. "Huh?" "Why don't you light a fuse?" It was quite obvious that Joe had heard nothing. "Fuse!" Joe repeated. He stooped to a box beneath the table. He appeared to lose his balance. He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, his head drooping. "What about fuse?" he murmured. His eyes closed. Tolliver pressed the backs of his hands against his face. If only his suspense might force refreshing tears as Sonny cried away his infant agonies! Numerous people asleep in that long Pullman train, and the special thundering down! Sally and Sonny a half mile away in the lonely house! And that drink-inspired creature on the floor--what was he capable of in relation to those unknown, helpless travelers? But what was he capable of; what had he, perhaps, been capable of towards those two known ones that Tolliver loved better than all the world? Tolliver shuddered. As long as Joe was here Sally and Sonny would not be troubled. But where had Joe been just now? How had Sally and Sonny fared while Tolliver had waited for that stumbling step on the stairs? He had to know that, yet how could he? For he couldn't leave Joe to care for all those lives on the special and thirty-three. He removed his coat and cap, and replaced them on the hook. He took a fuse from the box and lighted it. He raised the window and threw the fuse to the track beneath. It sputtered and burst into a flame, ruddy, gorgeous, immense. It etched from the night distant fences and trees. It bent the sparkling rails until they seemed to touch at the terminals of crimson vistas. If in the storm the locomotive drivers should miss the switch lamps, set against them, they couldn't neglect this bland banner of danger, flung across the night. When Tolliver closed the window he noticed that the ruddy glow filled the room, rendering sickly and powerless the yellow lamp wicks. And Tolliver clutched the table edge, for in this singular and penetrating illumination he saw that Joe imitated the details of sleep; that beneath half-closed lids, lurked a fanatical wakefulness, and final resolution where, on entering the tower, he had exposed only indecision.